sympathy for Alec Baldwin?

I've expressed sympathy for Alec Baldwin in the past. He's had run-ins with the paparazzi and has punched out a few camera-wielding idiots in his day, and I've actually applauded him for striking back at assholes who think "freedom of the press" means "license to invade your private life." But this latest incident, in which Baldwin fired a supposed "prop" gun that discharged what was apparently a live round that killed a cinematographer and injured a director, shows us that Baldwin is more concerned about covering his own ass and blaming others than he is about making amends to his victims and/or their families. The scuttlebutt is that Baldwin immediately demanded to know why he had a "hot gun," i.e., right at the moment he shot two people, he was already blaming someone else for his own negligence.

So I see little reason to feel any sympathy for Mr. Baldwin. He has shown himself, many times over, to be a consummate prick when working with others, and in this case, he has betrayed just how low his character goes (even if we discount the "Why do I have a hot gun?" thing, Baldwin is still on record as implicitly blaming others for his predicament; cf. his remarks on the need to do away with real guns on set and to tighten gun-safety procedures, all of which implies he sees this as a systemic failure, not a personal one). I don't know much about firearms, but my reading of various firearms-savvy sources is that Baldwin is ultimately the one who aimed and fired the gun—not the armorer, not the prop master, not the assistant director. Even if the gun had gone off accidentally, Baldwin still would have been responsible for where the gun was pointing when it went off.

Anyway, I hear that the police are investigating, and Baldwin says he is cooperating fully with the police, although I note he is still walking free when, by rights, he ought to be detained and questioned extensively while in detainment, as would be the case for anyone less rich, famous, and privileged. A lot of Instapundit comments have been along the lines of "karma's a bitch," given Baldwin's rabidly anti-gun political views, and while it may be true that a whole sequence of mistakes led up to the killing of Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer (also billed as "director of photography"), the ultimate truth is that Baldwin pointed the gun and pulled the trigger, and he's going to have to live with that, even if he walks away scot-free. And I do expect him to get, at worst, no more than a slap on the wrist; we live in an age when Hunter Biden's trash-filled laptop is ignored by the press, which always circles the wagons around its precious lefties. Whether in the media or in jurisprudence, the reality is "tanj," Larry Niven's sci-fi swear word, which stands for, "There Ain't No Justice."

ADDENDUM: Baldwin's wife Hilaria (the faux Latina) claims she's worried about her husband's possibly suffering from PTSD. I'm not sure an egomaniacal person like Alec Baldwin is capable of suffering PTSD. I saw some saddening examples of what they used to call "shell shock" in some old video I watched yesterday. See here (not for the squeamish). That's what real PTSD looks like.

ADDENDUM 2: I'm hearing noises that there is no excuse, ever, for any actor on set to point a weapon directly at another person. I don't know how true this is; I've seen plenty of movie scenes in which a gun is right in somebody's face. But if there's any truth to the idea that a loaded gun—prop or not—should never be pointed directly at another person, then how on earth did Alec Baldwin end up pointing his gun and firing at the director of photography? I've seen various versions of this question online already.